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Topic: Yesterdays Inspection - Swarm Cells! (Read 420 times)

Hi everyone,Second year beek here, who is really starting to question what the hell I'm doing. Yesterdays inspection was quite surprising to say the least. Opened up Hive #2, which came out of the winter weaker than my other three, yet it now has 2 honey supers on it (one is full and capped) ... two other hives only have one honey super on them and they really aren't doing anything, very slow to draw them out and fill them. So maybe I can stop referring to this hive as my weaker one! Anyways, checked it out and there before my eyes had to be 20 swarm cells ... line up nicely across the bottom a frame. Last week we did have a swarm, but I have no idea which hive it was ... it was extremely hot all last week, all the hives were bearding after this swarm .. just no way of knowing which one swarmed. So maybe it was this hive, after all? So, I was advised to take all those swarm cells off, which I did .... carefully ... during this time, I actually had two of the cells hatch out and was able to catch both queens. Pretty amazing to say the least, nature at its best! All these cells were disposed of. Now the question is ... whats my course of action now with this hive, if anything?

Good chance the hive with the cells swarmed. Did you leave a queen or cell for the hive? If not, then they are likely queen less. What did you do with the cells? Make any splits? Seems like a waste of resources to just throw them away. So easy to just throw one in a Nuc with a couple frames of bees to have a backup queen or two.

.Make a false swarm.- Put foundation hive on old site. Then there queen/queen cell and one brood frame and food frame.

- Move original hive 10 feet and let the bees fly themselves to the old site.

- after 5-7 days join hive patrts again when a new queen has emerged.

- When bees start to draw fioundations, it is sigh that sswarming fever will disappear. Another thing is that brood hive is in swarming mode too, and perhaps 30% of them try to swarm. It needs handling. If you put the queen cells behind excluder, so they cannot leave.Extra queens kill themselves.